

This was a once-in-a-century opportunity for us.” Chesky says: “There was a huge travel rebound over the summer because of the vaccine. What’s more, the Wifi filter was used more than 288 million times in the last year, making it clear what was at the top of every Airbnb user’s mind. In fact, he says, more than 20 percent of trips booked on the app between July and September were for at least a month’s stay and 45 percent were for no less than a week. “We came back from the holidays into 2021 and figured we couldn’t sit on our laurels,” recalls Chesky. What came next, though, was ultimately a design-driven rebound that helped formalize an IPO and cement Airbnb as one of the most inventive companies to be born from Silicon Valley in the last decade.

The world had changed and the company needed to scale back to find its footing. Instead, Airbnb lost 80 percent of its business in just eight weeks of pandemic fallout, and Chesky found himself writing a very different type of letter to his team in May 2020: one lamenting struggle and layoffs. Dear reader, this is just to let you know that as an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.Chesky had originally written the founder’s letter for a hoped-for IPO in March 2020. Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolic’s bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe. With the pandemic d estined to utterly alter people’s expectations for what they want from their homes - and their travel - there could be an interesting opportunity here to be unlocked. “People want to travel, they just don’t want to get on airplanes … they don’t want to go for business,” said Chesky. People are travelling a little more now, and Airbnb’s response to the pandemic has been to introduce ‘enhanced cleaning’ routines and to highlight places that are remote from others and equipped with good infrastructure.

It will also generate interest in Airbnb’s looming $3 billion IPO, despite the company recently being forced to lay off 25% of its staff as a consequence of the COVID-19 disaster. With potential plans to develop new architectural solutions with an environmental slant, and an interest in AR and VR, just what kind of innovation could emerge here? Then there’s the moneyĮven if the ambition is nowhere near as fabulous, the appointment will provide a firebreak against increasing criticism of Airbnb for its impact on property prices and corrosive effect on local communities. It is of course important not to read too much into this, but the idea that home design can be utterly transformed sounds interesting to me, so I can’t imagine it would not be of some interest to Ive. In order to meet the demands of the future, whether it be climate displacement or rural-urban migration, the home needs to evolve, to think forward,” Samara says. “The way buildings are made is outdated and generates a tremendous amount of waste. The focus of this project is on supporting the need for new housing in a more sustainable manner. “An initiative to prototype new ways that homes can be built and shared, guided by an ambition to realize more humanistic, future-oriented, and waste-conscious design.” The Samara group is engaged in experimental product design. We’ve also learned (I lost the source, sorry) that ex-Apple designer Miklu Silvanto, who worked under Ive at Apple, quit Airbnb in spring after a stint as head of interaction and industrial design for Airbnb’s Samara group. That report claims Airbnb’s current design chief Alex Schleifer was recently switched to a part-time role (subsequent reporting claims he is stepping down), and that three senior designers recently left the company. Nor is Ive likely to want to design a new range of branded merchandise – he’s going to want to do something that resonates, and articulates his belief that good design can transform reality.Īirbnb’s design department seems to be in the process of being revamped to support this, reading between the lines of a recent report from The Information. This kind of person is not going to be working with Airbnb to redesign the stationery and tweak the corporate website. And who has won numerous deign accolades, including a knighthood.
#Qa chesky airbnb jony ive lovefrompatel software
Designed world class series of highly successful hardware and software products, some of which changed the world.Designed a multi-billion dollar headquarters.To get real about this, it’s pretty clear that someone like Ive, who:
